more writing... words.

It doesn't take much when it happens.

Usually it's something as small as a quote half-read on Pinterest, or a line of music played on a piano by someone who means it.  Sometimes it's the feel of azalea leaves under my fingertips.  The sound the trees make when wind starts rushing through their branches.  The way my carkeys fit into my hand or how my brother's sneakers hit the floor.

It never takes much, but it's a hair trigger.  It just takes a touch.

It's all the stories, all the people, that could potentially come from me, imploding inside my veins.  "It's as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror" except there's no terror and there's no sudden silence.  All the future beings that might live inside my head wake up and all together announce their presence.

It's like static, it's like emotions, it's like thousands of years of lives and relationships and voices tangling up just under my skin and if I don't write them or at least write something to drown them out then I'll just go up in flames or explode or turn to dust or at the very least have a heart attack and die because my physical body is too weak for this.  Or maybe I'll just go insane and start talking back to the creatures in my head.

Sometimes I wonder if it's a healthy way to survive.  But I'd rather have the insanity than the silence.  Being crammed with impatient people is better than being on your own.

And then things end.

It's the last day of NaNo.

Say that out loud looking off somewhere to middle stage with enough melancholy in your voice and it sounds nice.  I didn't try that in real life, of course.

The last day of NaNo has been successful.  I reached my 40k goal and then a few hundred or so.  Better Angels, as it has become titled, is about halfway done.  I'm going to try to keep to the 1.3k goal in May and see if I can finish it before then.

But I know I won't, because NaNo is over.  It may be a personal drive but there's no real reason.  Because NaNo ended.  Because things end.

Another thing that's ended: SVVA.

Of course I didn't finish it and then bury my head under a pillow.  Of course I didn't send my little sparkly Viking vampire alien off to an unknown world and then have a nice cry.  Of course I didn't succumb to such ridiculous emotions.

Of course I'm lying.

Nine months.  I'm not even going to notice the convenient number there.  But nine months.  Much of that being procrastination, but still.  Nine months.

Most of the books I've finished lately have been NaNo projects that were over in a month or a little over.  I'm not accustomed to long-time projects now.  I forgot how they worm under your skin and settle down right between the two halves of your heart like they belong there, like they and they alone stitch the parts together and keep you alive.

I think it'll be good for my temperament and well-being if I keep to short-term projects that need to be finished in a month or two.  This is stressful.

When did writing become not-fun and bittersweet and just generally ouch?

Don't answer that.

Trust.

Not quite a week into Camp NaNo.  It's going pretty well.  I'm about to 7k words with a goal of 40k, so I'm doing fairly well.

I have another ramble, though.  A completely unplanned one that's come about today by a lot of stressful things that makes me want to straighten out what's in my head.  And unfortunately for my few readers, that means a blog post.

I'm a fledgling personality type geek.  MBTI types fascinate me.  Probably because I'm an INTJ and I don't understand people and this gives me a practical, if basic, plan of action when it comes to my fellow man.  And also as the 'machine' of the sixteen types, I get a lot of flack just for how I'm hardwired - less than a percent of females are INTJs and people don't seem to like machines, especially female ones.  Researching other INTJs makes me feel better about myself and thus probably eases the arrogance that typically comes out when I feel like I have to defend myself and my apparent lack of emotion.

Relationships for me are particularly hard because... people are people.  Flawed.  They don't work quite right; their pieces don't make them function as they should.  They don't make sense.  It puts me on edge.  It makes it hard for me to like many people, much less like them a lot.  It takes a lot to earn my trust, and when I say that, it's not a 'I trust you so I'm going to be emotional and spill my guts to you all the time' that you find a lot in romcoms.

Trusting for some INTJs/me is just deciding that you're steady enough for me to rely on to not screw me or yourself over.  That you're mature enough, intelligent enough, or even just intrinsically good enough not to change or do stupid things or - as happens, whether accidentally or purposefully - hurt me.

Basically -
Me: I've determined that you're a more functional human being than most.  You're not going to pull the rug out from under me by being an idiot or being cruel; therefore you are a safe place for me to stow my emotions.

Yes, we're wired for arrogance, how could you tell?

Safety.  It's all about safety because safety is what intelligent people go for and we like to think we're intelligent.

I'm probably more of a middle-spectrum INTJ.  Because while this is true - erasing is, again, the intelligent way to go, so as to save emotional energy - for me, it also really, really hurts before the erasing is complete.

It's confusing, "that dirtiest of all dirty words."  Confusion is only a step above boredom on the ladder of Worst Mental States.  I'm constantly trying to figure out what went wrong - was it me, or was it them? - where the relationship deviated from the plans.  But since the erasure is usually in the works as soon as trust is lost, I just can't get those answers.  So it's a Mobius strip of bewilderment.  A sentence missing a few vital parts of speech, an equation missing a few variables.

If I could verbalize how much stress this puts me under and how much sleep I've lost and how much I've hated myself - well, I probably wouldn't post it in a blog.  Too emotional.  But that's all happened.  Multiple times.  And it's always enough to send me back into the internal world where everything makes sense, sometimes for weeks or months.  Because if one person turned out not to work properly, and the human race has been giving proof of its faultiness for millennia, why trust anyone?

I'm blessed with a small circle of amazing friends that always manage to pull me out of that, even if they don't know it.  I appreciate them.  But I still have nightmares about the relationships that malfunctioned because I've never figured them out.  Faulty information does that.

Get over yourself.

This is sort of the first part of a two-part post I'm planning on writing.  It was originally going to be one post with a disclaimer.  But I realized I'd end up ranting for a couple paragraphs because this is a touchy subject with me and I figured why not just make the original rant shorter for the loss of the page-long disclaimer?

So this is the prologue to the oncoming blogpost, which I'm roughly entitling Doctor Who And Why I Call Myself a Whooligan and Not A Whovian Because My Favorite Season Was Season One and Whovians Hate Me For That.

I'm still working on the title.

But anyway.  The disclaimer was going to say this: loads of Whovians who watched the original Doctor Who before the rebooted show have told me that Eleven is more like the original Doctors, and that's why they prefer him to Nine or Ten.  And that's totally fine.  Different opinions - I like them.  The trouble comes when, as has happened to me, people get belligerent and say that Eleven is the best New Who Doctor and that the people who don't like him obviously have something wrong with them - and if they don't know the original Doctors, then they're obviously n00bs and their opinion is moot.

As John Green said, this is one of those few things that turns me into a giant squid of anger.

Especially now with all of the reboots, remakes, and revitalizations, elitism like this is everywhere.  The people who've been in fandoms before it was cool have disdain to spare for the oncoming newbies.  (Not all of them; I just want to make that clear.  There are idiots and smart people in every group.)  And sometimes I see someone who's had experience in a fandom or an area of interest, and they just swarm over a confused newbie like a one-man cloud of vampire bats, with this wad of corrections and clarifications and facepalms.

It's not. cool. guys.

Entertainment like this is not a big deal.  It's fun.  That's what entertainment is FOR - it's for FUN.  It's for relaxing and deepening your mind and maybe making friends that you wouldn't have made otherwise.

You do not use entertainment - movies, novels, mythologies, comic books, TV shows, radio programs - to talk down to people because they got something wrong.  Okay?  You don't.

A person should be able to enjoy the Marvel Cinematic Universe without getting lambasted because he's never read all hundred billion comics that came before.  A girl should be able to say she really enjoyed The Kane Chronicles even if she knows nothing about Egyptian mythology.  I should be able to talk about Doctor Who even if my favorite Doctor is Nine, I hate Amy with every fiber of my being, and I occasionally write Dr. Who instead of Doctor.  A guy should be able to say he enjoyed the book and the movie without getting "THEY CHANGED THE BOOK SO MUCH" shouted in his face as if he didn't notice himself.  And a girl should be able to say she enjoys Twilight without getting venom spit at her.

Elitism like is hurtful and damaging and it just makes you look like an idiot.  Not all fans do it - fandom people are generally awesome - and of course the nasty fans don't affect everybody the same way.  Some people can roll it off.  Other people internalize.  And before anyone says that they should get used to it - which they should, I agree - I can also say that they shouldn't have to.

I mean, come on.  Jesus loved noobs!  He didn't go around talking down to Gentiles because they didn't have the entire Jewish history in their bloodlines.  I think it was the people who thought they knew everything who ended up getting most of His righteous indignation, wasn't it?

So what this all boils down to, in the end, is respect.  Respect that other people have different opinions. Respect that some people just like Greek stories and that they don't know Ancient Greek and that it sure as heck isn't hurting you if they don't know that Hercules is Roman and not Greek.  Respect that someone doesn't have time to read all the original Avengers comic books and that even if they had the time they might not have the money and that where on earth do you get comic books anymore anyway?    Respect that maybe Owl City's latest album is actually their first introduction to electronica and that just because all they know yet is "Good Time" doesn't mean they don't have all the necessary enthusiasm, love, and effort to put into a fandom.

Or that someone doesn't want to be as big a fan as you are!  What an idea, that someone doesn't want to be just as hardcore and awesome as you are.  Kick in the pants, that.

Let. people. alone.  Newbies don't need a teacher.  They need someone who'll sit and scream with them at Weeping Angels and who'll headbang along with them to OneRepublic's new song and someone who'll await the next book or episode with just as much agony as they have.

In other words, get over yourself.